I really wonder where we're headed (in general, not specifically with Teslas) regarding technologies requirements to "do enough to prevent misuse."
These requirements are already a major thorn in my side. My car has sensors to detect when a passenger isn't wearing a seat belt and to blast an ear-hurting alarm directly at the driver. It's so loud that it's actually a safety issue in itself because it's hard to focus on driving when there is a blaring alarm in your face.
The worst of the problem though, is that the system is made to be ultra cautious and thus has a lot of false positives. For example, if I put my backpack on the passenger seat, I have to plug the seat belt in otherwise it will scream at me once my speed hits 10 MPH. Or if one of my kids decides to change seats so unbuckles and moves to a new chair and buckles in that one, then the car will scream at me unless both buckles are buckled, even if there's no weight in the previous seat. It takes several minutes to timeout and stop, meanwhile it is ear-splittingly loud and so bad that it's unsafe to drive while it's blaring.
There are more things, like if I leave the engine running while walking away with the key fob in my pocket, it will loudly honk twice. This happens constantly. Just this morning it honked ear splittingly loud in my face while I was scraping the ice from my windshield.
Then of course there is the complete disabling of the in-car navigation controls while moving, so my passenger can't configure the map while I'm driving, even though there is absolutely no reason to do that. The net result is also that I end up using my phone which is way less safe because I have to look down and the controls are not even remotely optimized for quick and low-attention use.
Our modern way of maximizing the responsiblity of the manufacturer to prevent misuse and minimizing the liability of the person doing the misusing is leading us to some real bad places IMHO.
I feel like all of these are minor annoyances compared to the more serious safety issues they are trying to prevent. I feel like you are underestimating how stupid the average user is… and especially how stupid the most stupid users are.
We have a drivers exam in one form or another in nearly every country that is intended to certify and evaluate your ability to pilot a vehicle. While it doesn’t always, it should include all facets of driving and the car shouldn’t need to hold your hand. I strongly believe that this hand holding cars are required to do now just lowers the average skill of new drivers.
A great example of this is an alarming amount of new drivers are absolutely incapable of backing a vehicle up unguided on mirrors alone, they rely solely on the backup camera and it was never a skill they had to learn.
The United States has 43k fatalities caused by drivers every year, and millions of people suffer life-altering injuries and billions in property damages.
There are only two ways we’re going to improve that: letting fewer people drive or making cars harder to use unsafely. Since there’s intense political opposition to building bike/transit infrastructure, removing driving privileges or even ticketing unsafe drivers, we’re going to keep seeing attempts to solve the problem with technical measures.
Not sure if part of your argument is that we shouldn’t have safety features like a backup camera because they lead to worse drivers… because that is absurd.
At the end of the day, you are never going to be able to do tests or training to the level where it invalidates the need for good UX and safety features. Even for tasks with extensive training like air pilots, there is still a tremendous amount of effort put towards safety and usability. Human beings are fallible.
I suspect pretty soon the mirrors may go the way of morse code with respect to tesging.
Tesla is trying to eliminate rearview mirrors, replacing them with cameras.
that said, I LIKE mirrors - they don't go out or white out in the wrong lighting. I also like turn signals and gearshift levers, which tesla has already eliminated. It seems like the only button you can depend on in a tesla is the hazard lights (by law)
new teslas do not have any stalks - no turn signals or gear shift stalks.
turn signals - they are a touch sensor in the middle of the steering wheel.
gear shift - the new cars "guess" which direction you want to go and shift for you. You can select a direction on the touchscreen. There is also a touch area underneath the center console for selecting gears (you have to touch it to wake, then touch again to shift).
lights are a touch area on the steering wheel.
the horn is a touch area on the steering wheel.
By law cars require rearview mirrors, so tesla ships them, but they are fighting against them both technically and in a regulatory way.
I think tesla is throwing the baby, your spouse and your kids out with the bathwater.
I would prefer if these controls were an $2k option, maybe even a dashboard as an option.
The Cybertruck leaves the factory with rear view mirrors for regulatory reasons but they are easily removeable by the end user and have cameras to take their duty
Nothing. The problem starts when they kill other people doing it, which is unfortunately very common with automotive collisions. It's like when someone gets in my car, sits behind me and says they won't put a seatbelt on, they are fine with taking the risk - to which my reply is that it's fine, but I'm not fine with taking that risk, because in a collision your limp body will go directly through my seat and kill me, even though I have my seatbelt on. So yes, kill yourself if you wish, but don't take others with you.
Whatever happened to empathy? Those people don’t deserve to die despite making mistakes or being careless. Many of them probably have kids or other family that love and rely on them.
Not totally sure how that applies here, since I don’t think anyone would argue that having a few extra warnings is somehow slowing down progress.
I also disagree with the article for other reasons. The idea that something being the first priority means it’s the only priority is nonsense. Safety can be weighted the highest out of all the priorities while still being balanced with the other priorities.
> For example, if I put my backpack on the passenger seat
Not trying to say that you're wrong, but an unsecured, heavy backpack is a real safety risk in even minor accidents. From the impact pattern, it's like having a pet or a baby in the front seat and not securing it.
If you can buy one from 30 years ago kept in a collection. With current ones you have some parts that are still built like a tank, but other parts just fall apart. You can't buy dumb AND quality cars outside of the maker/restoration scene.
From what I recall reading recently, the most recent models are cheap Chinese-made cars with the bare minimum of attention and QC put into them. Like, frame welded with spot welds that can be pulled apart by hand kind of issues.
Let's not just throw that in the box of "cheap Chinese". Tesla has shipped cars with windshields not attached to the vehicle in any way, has shipped cars with missing brake pads, etc.
I'm not. This is not the 'cheap Chinese' box. This is the 'absolute worst possible quality car that stays together long enough to ship to Russia and get sold before it falls apart after the first rough ride' box.
Tesla's QC issues make them look like bespoke works of art compared to what I saw of some of the newest Ladas. It's one thing when you're missing parts or badly glued windshields. It's a whole other thing when the welds holding the frame of your car together have the structural integrity of butter on Venus.
My wife’s Scion lets out the worlds most painful screech if you try to lock the doors with one of them open. My Mazda will just… lock the doors. I don’t even understand what the Scion is trying to accomplish. It’s just trying to mock you I guess.
Surely that's obvious? The clear intent of locking the doors is to keep people out of your car. It's trying to warn you before you walk away from a car you think you've successfully secured but have not.
Agreed. I heard a story about a guy who is used to chewing tobacco while driving and would crack open the door and spit while moving at speed. He tried doing this in his son's new jeep and the car immediately slammed on the brakes and nearly caused an accident. Obviously cracking the door to spit out the bottom isn't too safe but slamming on the brakes? What why?
Paramedic here. We have to restrain all of our psych/behavioral patients, even ones who are calm, cooperative, medicated, and are really just being moved from facility to facility.
Why? Because someone at some point has attempted to exit a vehicle moving at speed.
Slamming on the brakes seems like an over-reaction. Nobody is arguing opening the door at speed is safe, but an unexpected brake application isn't safe either.
A more appropriate measure would be a loud and annoying alarm. Or a steering wheel shaker (like many lane-keeping systems already have).
I read a little about this system on jeeps. It seems to only happen under 1 mph, and stems from previous novel (faulty ux) shifter designs that led people to be run over by their own cars.
This is what we experienced with our Jeep. The only times it’s gone off is when pulling in or out, and it’s very rare.
It is hard to believe the OPs story is entirely true, or wasn’t exaggerated.
More like the guy spilled some dip on himself while pulling out of the garage (because of the sudden halt) and it eventually turned into a “honey, i’m serious, I almost died” story because they were so embarrassed.
That's an emergency maneuver where you are trying to land an out of control vehicle, don't really see how it applies to the above scenario. So no its still not safe but neither is having no brakes.
Door/window sensors aren't infallible -- they're quite literally a wear item in most variants.
It's absolutely ridiculous to use such a signal to direct vehicle handling dynamics and control aspects.
source : I was a mechanic at a dealership as a young person for many years, and I replaced an untold amount of door switches as warranty work -- but back then the most that they did was annoy the driver with an intermittently lit cabin rather than brake-stomping.
I wonder if this is a cultural difference. When I was a kid, because people did this all the time for various reasons. It's less common now (or at least, in the circle of people who ride in my car it is), especially with better door ajar sensors, but still a situation in which if it happened in my car I would guess the door hadn't been shut all the way and they were just closing it. As a teenager/20s in the 90s/00s, having tobacco spit and realizing you forgot your cup was a semi-common reason to do that. The alternative (assuming you weren't so classless as to spit on the floormat) was to swallow the spit which is really terrible for you.
it's not a great habit, but i've routinely witnessed people in sports cars crack the door open for additional clearance to manipulate their belts or adjust their seats, then quickly re-closing the door -- my point being that this kind of thing isn't absolutely exclusive to people chewing tobacco, and the car stomping the brakes or whatever is clearly under-thought.
Unless you are truly an expert spitter and the car is not moving, then spitting out the window is going to end up streaking the tobacco juice all across the exterior of the car. If the rear window is open, it might even go onto the back seat of the car. If you aren't moving then it will usually land somewhat vertically on the body of the car, or straight back (horizontally) if you're moving fast. It's always super tempting to try, but nearly impossible to pull off
Sorry, a person's right to be a complete moron (opening a door while a car is moving) doesn't trump everyone else's right to not be endangered by said moron.
There are a lot of reasons you might have to open and the close the door while driving, for example if your jacket or something got caught in the door and you don't realize it until you're on the road. Done that many times, it's not unsafe except if the car decides to auto-brake.
It’s an oversimplification to conclude that the drop in deaths is just from “nannyifying” cars. There have been major improvements to vehicle frames, roll safety, crumple zones, etc that all play a major role in that graph.
And adding safety features to cars is one thing. Indiscriminately slamming on the brakes without context is another.
A feature has to actually lead to safer outcomes. Braking hard when opening the door is highly questionable.
> There have been major improvements to vehicle frames, roll safety, crumple zones, etc that all play a major role in that graph.
The people who decry the "nanny state" tend to oppose requirements for these, as well. You'll find plenty of people moaning about how they don't make cars like they used to, that bumpers require expensive replacement in low-speed impacts, that all this extra metal is expensive, etc.
> Indiscriminately slamming on the brakes without context is another.
I wouldn't call "when the driver door opens at speed" to be "indiscriminate". I don't doubt the sudden decceleration is a bit surprising (and it probably quickly trains you out of opening the door mid-drive), but if someone rear-ends you because of this that's clearly their fault for following too closely.
> The people who decry the "nanny state" tend to oppose requirements for these, as well.
I’m sure you can find some people who find safer crumple zones unreasonable, but I don’t think most people fit into this category.
Automatic braking is far less clear cut, and as someone who prefers cars with safe frames, I don’t yet trust the car to know when it’s the right time to brake (some collision avoidance features are getting way better).
> I wouldn't call "when the driver door opens at speed" to be "indiscriminate".
I would. The car doesn’t know why the door was opened at speed, or what the consequences of braking in that moment might be.
The driver has a better chance of knowing these thing.
Furthermore, if the driver isn’t prepared for this behavior, the car has now created a dangerous situation for the driver, regardless of who is at fault if it causes a rear-end collision. A collision that would not have happened if not for the automatic behavior.
I have a friend who is allergic to bees. While driving one day (they were in the passenger seat), a bee made an appearance. It must have flown in through the sunroof at some point, and started flying around in a rather agitated fashion. When it landed on the edge of the driver door, I opened it slightly (at speed) and let the wind carry it away.
I think this is the only time I’ve ever opened the door while driving, but the one thing I did not need at that moment was my car thinking it knew better than me.
Until self driving tech has truly arrived, I’d argue this kind of automatic behavior is pretty indiscriminate. This is not the same as a collision avoidance sensor that knows the car is about to hit something.
Maybe I’m wrong and most people who open the door while driving are trying to escape the car and would benefit from slower speed. I doubt it. And if this is the case, one wonders if braking would work anyway (why else is someone trying to exit the car while moving?).
Couldn't disagree more. Slamming on the brakes is an absolute last ditch maneuver at speed and shouldn't come about because the car gets a lil confused.
> A door opening on the highway is an emergency scenario, too.
It is absolutely not, that's a silly claim. Go and push open your door on the highway, nothing much will happen. Wind will push it back, it'll mostly close and you can keep driving that way all day if you like.
Sure it's not the normal way to drive, but there's nothing dramatic about it, let alone "emergency".
Give the chance, an HNer will always assume that someone is stupid, rather than risk the possibility of admitting to themselves they are ignorant about something.
The issue is someone is used to the way an old system operated and expects a new system to operate the same way. My mother has no clue that the spinning circle is a "system thinking" icon, but if it were an hourglass it would make immediate sense.
No, it’s documented. Thoroughly. It’s just that it’s a new car and the guy assumed there were no changes, and he didn’t check, and his son didn’t tell him. End of story.
Also, this is an adult. With grownish children. They are
old enough to know the risk of OPENING THE DRIVERS DOOR AT 70 MPH, and it is no one’s responsibility to account for that, and the guy should know by now that even if it worked 10,000,000,000 times before, it is inherently risky and dangerous, and it will always be inherently risky and dangerous.
Like, the risk to reward ratio here is categorically insane. Use a cup, or maybe die? And they chose maybe die? And that’s a problem with the car? Huh?
I don't see it being that dangerous. He's likely just pushing it slightly open with his left forearm automatically and taking his eyes off the road just for the second he needs to spit his tobacco out. If something happens the moment he stops actively pushing the wind will close it and he's likely strapped with a seatbelt so it's not like he can somehow fall out. I've had to re-close my door at speed multiple times on old vehicles because I didn't close it hard enough and it was never sketchy in any way. Doing literally anything on a touchscreen takes more attention.
And the documented part is BS. People don't read their owners manuals and even if they did it'd usually say not to open the door in motion, not that it will slam the brakes if you do. Even if it does it's unrealistic to expect people to read the manual of every car they drive. Rentals would go out of business real quick.
> Then of course there is the complete disabling of the in-car navigation controls while moving, so my passenger can't configure the map while I'm driving
Tesla allows this and a lot of other things. TBH, I'm shocked that NHTSA hasn't made them stop, given how quickly they've intervened when passengers were allowed to play solitaire on the screen in drive. :)
I understand the reasoning, but it is all a bit weird given that people have a phone that they can use instead. And unfortunately, they do resort to the phone pretty regularly.
> is that the system is made to be ultra cautious and thus has a lot of false positives. For example, if I put my backpack on the passenger seat
Given that FMVSS 208 mandates passenger occupation detection at 35lbs for seat belts, and 65lbs for airbags, I'm not sure what you're expecting from the system. How is it meant to differentiate between a 35lb backpack and a 35lb child?
> My car has sensors to detect when a passenger isn't wearing a seat belt and to blast an ear-hurting alarm directly at the driver. It's so loud that it's actually a safety issue in itself because it's hard to focus on driving when there is a blaring alarm in your face.
> Start by sitting in the driver's seat and closing the door. Buckle your seat belt. Turn the ignition to the "On" position without starting the engine. Within a few seconds of turning the ignition on, unbuckle and then re-buckle your seat belt three times, making sure each action is completed quickly. After the third buckle action, keep the seat belt buckled and wait for approximately 20 seconds. You should hear a confirmation sound or see a visual indication that the seat belt warning chime volume can now be adjusted. Use the volume control buttons on the steering wheel or the audio system controls to adjust the volume. Please note that the specific buttons or menu options for adjusting the volume may vary depending on your Corolla's trim level and audio system.
Worth a shot? Sounds like it’s adjustable (presuming Corolla and Sienna share some software) and yours is set a bit high.
I just disabled all of these warnings on my Toyota with a third party OBDII reader and the Carista app, which also comes with lots of other fun options to fiddle with. Only thing I haven't figured out is how to disable the chime on startup!
> I just disabled all of these warnings on my Toyota with a third party OBDII reader...
I'd do it too but... My car (not a Toyota), although 11 years old, is still on an extended manufacturer warranty (which I pay to renew each year) but if I modify the system, I void the warranty.
I'm just pointing out that out because Toyota have great warranties AFAIK and can be extended up to at least 7 years old? (if you do the maintenance at Toyota dealerships).
I want to "hack" my car too but I'm not doing it as long as it's still under warranty.
Both in EU and US you have laws that say the manufacturer isn't allowed to deny you a warranty repair because of a mod unless they can undeniably prove that the issue was caused by the mod. I know of several cases where the manufacturer had to be taken to court over this but the consumer ultimately won because no manufacturer can demonstrate how using OBD reader to change your seatbelt settings can cause the transmission to fail.
These depend heavily on car. What kind of car is this?
The decision to have an annoying beep instead of a soft ding or pop up is stupid but many cars do this. Mine handles seatbelts well and never has a false positive there so it's not a general modern car problem (2021 sonata).
Nice, that's good to know. It's a 2023 Toyota Sienna, and historically Toyota has been the most sensible of cars I've driven (much, much better than Ford). I'm overall pretty pleased with it, minus a few rough edges like mentioned. I'm really glad to hear that it's not a widespread industry issue though.
On the other hand, a couple of days ago I set the parking brake and absentmindedly walked out of a car with the automatic transmission still in reverse ... fortunately the brake held, I was behind the car going "huh, funny, the reverse lights are on ... oh, **!"
Yeah agreed, I'm not against all safety features. That one seems like a pretty straight forward safety solution though. If an auto transmission is still in gear, the parking break is on, and the key fob has left the vehicle, I think an attention-getting noise is appropriate in that case.
I was going for the Darwin with a 2007 model, still uses ignition key, fob is only for remote locks.
But yeah, I've been spoiled by modern fobs you don't even take out of your pocket. I really like those, that's the kind of convenience that makes you sign up for robot overlords ...
> I really like those, that's the kind of convenience that makes you sign up for robot overlords
These can be super annoying. My partner has a car which just spontaneously unlocks whenever the key approaches. Which is ridiculous since often I'm just walking to the mailbox or out to a different car and have zero desire to unlock that particular car.
It just assumes, without understanding what I'm actually doing. Which is the fundamental UX problem with all these misfeatures.
All I have met so far is the kind you push a door button to open, or close.
They even have carjacking prevention features, to keep unwanted riders out - only the driver door opens unless you start by opening another door or double-tap the driver's.
My car automatically shifts to Park when the driver side door is opened if it is stopped. It does this even if it is in Neutral. The car wash person was very unhappy about it, until I offered to sit inside to make sure it stays in Neutral
Except for the nav, most people would consider the occasional beep to be a petty minor issue. Except for the nav thing, these things have been around for ages, and if you’re struggling with them that heavily, I would suggest that features that have been pretty standard for 30+ years that the issue might not be the features.
The seat belt dinging is a minor inconvenience. The key fob honking can probably be controlled via your car settings. I turned the honking off on my car, now it softly dings at me once.
You're being very, very dramatic, is my point. If the seat belt alarm is that ear splitting, you might want to talk to a doctor?
There wasn't any hyperbole. It's loud enough that it is physically painful, not just annoying. And if you read what I said, it's not the "occasional beep", it's a continual blast of loud tones. And I already looked through the car settings for the horn, and it can't be turned off. Some people on the internet have figured out how to hack it off with OBD2, but if that's what you're suggesting then that's ludicrous and extreme HN bubble. I tried it anyway, but even if it had worked, suggesting people do that is not in any way a reasonable answer to the problem (though is more reasonable than what you're doing, which is dismissing it as not real without even experiencing it).
And thanks for the free medical advice, but I actually have talked to a doctor and I actually have minor hearing loss, not hearing gain or whatever medical "problem" you think might cause people to hear something louder than it is.
What people are saying is that your experience is a wildly rare one and that for >99% of the population, the things that are troubling you so much are simply non-issues.
No offense, but if you haven’t, you might consider anti-anxiety or similar drugs. Not saying it isn’t real, or that it’s your fault, but there is a big difference between it being real and it being entirely caused by the car.
Is there some reason you can’t simply sell your car and get a different one? For the amount of pain you say you are in, this seems like an easy and direct solution?
> My car has sensors to detect when a passenger isn't wearing a seat belt and to blast an ear-hurting alarm directly at the driver. It's so loud that it's actually a safety issue in itself because it's hard to focus on driving when there is a blaring alarm in your face.
You aren’t supposed to be driving until all occupants in your vehicle have buckled their seatbelts. That’s why the alarm is loud and annoying, because obviously you can’t be trusted to follow basic motor vehicle laws. You’re not supposed to be focused on driving before everyone is buckled in.
My car's gone the opposite way. When trying to find it in the parking lot, with the old one, you just pushed "lock" on the keyfob twice and listened for the horn honk. The new one makes a nice, elegant but not very loud "beep" sound. Useless for this purpose.
They also got the seat belt warning right. At startup it displays a map of the seats, green if occupied and buckled, red if not, grey if unoccupied. Good for checking that the kids did up their seat belts in the back, without being annoying. I'm guessing it does have a nag chime, but the kids have behaved so far...
I do have to say, the only complaint about the gimcrackery in mine (low-ish trim level 2023 Honda Civic) is that the menu UI is a bit clunky. But nothing gets in your way once adjusted properly and the automations (e.g. you can't manually time the windshield washer squirt any more - it squirts at the optimum angle of the wipers) work pretty well.
> My car's gone the opposite way. When trying to find it in the parking lot, with the old one, you just pushed "lock" on the keyfob twice and listened for the horn honk. The new one makes a nice, elegant but not very loud "beep" sound. Useless for this purpose.
Good for everyone around though, because you're not polluting the soundscape with a completely unncessary honk. Where I live, honking within cities is allowed only in emergency or dangerous situations. Not that anyone follows that law though.
The car also has the modern low beams, with a very sharp dividing line between "light" and "no light". That's one feature I wish "everyone around" had...
Besides as the sibling pointed out the backpack, what do you do when you're driving 80 on the highway and a kid unbuckles? Do you slam on your breaks, cruise to the shoulder, and sit in a dangerous place on the highway while having an argument with a 4-year old? If the goal is to keep everybody safe (including the kid), that would be terrible, terrible advice.
Did you read the rest of the post? A backpack shouldn't require a seat belt to drive. If there is going to be a sensor and response like this it should be done correctly.
Yep! That person also lets their kids change seats while the car is in motion and complains about the warning beep.
Arguably, if your backpack is heavy enough to set off the sensor, it's probably a projectile hazard in itself and probably shouldn't be on the seat and instead in a foot well or in the cargo area.
The details are scant, but it sounds like the vehicle is going to be quicker to disable autopilot if it thinks you aren’t paying attention.
I’m curious to see what this amounts to because Autopilot is already pretty sensitive to this. Pick up your phone or look away from the road for more than a few seconds and the in-cabin car notices and warns you. I don’t know of a comparable system in any car with self driving or without.
My 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV does exactly this with SuperCruise, in layers. Look away from the road for a few seconds? Visible warning. Keep looking away? Audible warning. Still looking away? SuperCruise disables, slows the vehicle to a stop, and calls OnStar.
Who picks up their phone while driving? Or looks away for a few seconds? If you're driving 80 kph and looks away for three and a half second, that's basically 80 meters of movement where you didn't see anything. Just crazy.
Most people. Easier on Autopilot for sure and I'm quite happy it's already so naggy. Even when you ARE paying attention it would be too easy to let your mind drift away if it wasn't nagging you enough.
So it's basically lane assist + cruise control but stops working if you look away? I'm not going to pay 7500 €/$ for that. The whole purpose of self-driving for me would be to be able to stretch my arms or do something small on my phone every now and then. I'm totally fine if the car is uber careful and drives super slow or parks on the shoulder if it is not 100% sure what to do, and I'm also fine if it says "Attention! You have to take over in 15 seconds or something bad happens." But having the option to not pay attention for a couple of minutes is the whole point of self-driving for me. Unless they get that working on the Autobahn (maybe just in good weather, no congestion, reasonable speeds) it's just a toy.
Edit: meant "self-driving" as opposed to theoretical FSD.
Yeah I mixed up the terms but I was talking about things like autopilot.
My point was even if you don't have "door-to-door good as a human driver really fully self-driving", the main feature of self-driving is that you should be able to not pay attention for a while. Personally I'm not sure that "proper" FSD will even be possible in the near future.
That's fine. But it's not meant to be self driving, and it isn't a paid extra. You still need to be attentive, you just get to stop "operating" for a while.
Interesting. 2023 Polestar 2 does not seem to have any real alertness monitoring. It just checks that your hands are on the steering wheel. And just like Tesla, sometimes you have to give it a little wiggle so it knows you’re paying attention!
Very nice car though: excellent build quality and driving feel. Some aspects of the Google software not quite as good as Tesla’s however (but the maps/navigation are excellent, maybe even better than Tesla).
Tesla's highlighting stuff that various other car brands have and I think there's also an influx of newish drivers that just didn't check what their cars were capable of (nobody reads the manual).
I have trouble with the wording in this case. This would not increase the safety of autopilot but limit the usage to situations closer to the “happy path” of the system.
If we were talking about ensuring the driver is wearing a seatbelt, then I would agree with your point as that has no direct impact on the performance of Autopilot. However, Autopilot requires a 'fully attentive driver' to function as intended. Improving the safety features of a component required for it to function does improve the safety of Autopilot.
Autopilot is a suite of driver assistance features.
The driver assistance features can't assist the driver if there is no driver because they've moved to the backseat.
Level 2 driver assists should be measured by their safety as a complete system, which includes the driver and driver monitoring. If autopilot causes the average driver to pay less attention that is a safety issue with autopilot that should be addressed.
From a technical standpoint I understand what you're saying (autopilot didn't get any better at driving), but if autopilot is causing a stochastic safety issue with driver focus then addressing that is a good thing and makes the complete system safer.
Autopilot is already trigger happy and turning off for nothing, this will kill the value of using it. It's already quite annoying to have to do more dumb performative work to use Autopilot than to use a legacy radar based cruise control with lane keeping... At the end of the day, even with FSD the software isn't good enough to be more than a glorified lane keeping adaptive cruise control, but it's more annoyingly starring at your eyeballs than dumber cars. And now I guess it'll be worse?
My Model Y turned off FSD when I was fully engaged, but with my head tilted sideways. It wants me to sit in a particular way and have my head straight for some reason. It's really annoying.
That's odd. I've had AP and FSD disable abruptly a hand full of times in the last five years on our Model 3 and Model Y. It will happily chime at me if it thinks I am looking at my phone or something, but it is just doing the blue strobe + audible chime, not completely disabling.
From my experience if FSD/AP turns off without me turning it off, it makes sounds that seem like the whole airplane is going to crash. Same with lane departure warnings.
Relevant part:
>Description of the Safety Risk : In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, if a driver misuses the SAE Level 2 advanced driver-assistance feature such that they fail to maintain continuous and sustained responsibility for vehicle operation and are unprepared to intervene, fail to recognize when the feature is canceled or not engaged, and/or fail to recognize when the feature is operating in situations where its functionality may be limited, there may be an increased risk of a collision.
I'm on my fifth Tesla now and I drive a lot. The switch from radar to pure vision has been really disruptive and annoying, especially in tight spaces like a garage. If this ends up causing more nagging, the value of having autopilot will simply be worth the "costs". I used FSD beta and while it's a cool party trick, I just don't trust it enough to use every single day compared to using basic autopilot.
I've driven with GM's Super Cruise (Escalade) and it's about 80 percent the same as basic autopilot. The interior quality is much better but you're in a GM vehicle which are kind of known to be ticking-time bombs.
This includes Mobileye cars without driver monitoring. I wonder if they will take similar action against various other Mobileye cars?
My Nissan Propilot behaves very similarly to AP, just with less capability and even less alertness monitoring. Surely it would be affected by the same recall? Along with a lot of other cars using similar systems?
Or maybe there is some subtle difference, but the article doesn't really make that clear. And given the broadness on the Tesla side, it is hard to see what could be different.
I'm not sure what to make of it from a legal perspective, but from an automation safety perspective the difference is the "Valley of Degraded Supervision"[1].
A very simple automated system that makes a lot of mistakes will make a driver more alert than baseline, but as the automation improves drivers will quickly start to trust the system too much and lose alertness. There is a huge gulf where the system is good enough to cause loss of alertness, but where the failure rate is still far higher than the average human driver.
But you're right, in that context it doesn't make much sense to apply to AP1 cars but not everybody else. It is a voluntary recall so Tesla might just be recalling everything named "Autopilot" even if a mandated recall wouldn't have.
I think so too. TBH, the Propilot system rarely got activated, because of how ineffective it was. But if they are left out of a recall like this, that would mean that we are penalizing systems for being more effective.
I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially if the boundaries aren't well defined.
Agreed, I find it concerning that even the basic system in my recent Ford feels like its edging into degraded supervision territory under certain circumstances despite only having steering based attention monitoring. Regulators/congress should be much more proactive about defining what constitutes proper driver monitoring.
I think the big issue is that the NHTSA is fundamentally a reactive organization. Automakers self-certify compliance with the regulations, then at some point later the NHTSA may investigate and take action against a specific product or manufacturer if there are enough complaints. Legally I'm not sure that they are allowed to make broad recalls even if its the logical thing to do.
unrelated, but does anyone else start to panic in autonomous vehicles? Every time I have been in a Tesla with autopilot on I immediately feel dread and and impending doom and I get very anxious.
If that the case, perhaps you should feel that way every time you are near a road. Without commenting on autopilot performance, there are enough drivers who are worse.
Maybe autopilot just helps you realize that you are not really fully in control about everything that may happen.
> Without commenting on autopilot performance, there are enough drivers who are worse.
To be fair, you really can’t compare the performance of drivers to Autopilot, without commenting on Autopilot performance.
Many people’s anxiety with it is exactly due to lack of confidence in Autopilot, and (relatively) more confidence in humans.
I’m not arguing which one is worse, I’m just saying you can’t make the comparison without commenting on the performance of both (by definition, required for making a comparison).
I drive a lot. Around here, I trust a tesla with AP on over any driver on the road. Everyone is going 15 over the limit driving with their knees because they are on their phone texting at 80 mph. This is everyday, every time I get on a highway.
Local roads, same but we are still doing 60 in a 45 with our head glued to our shoulder or holding the phone with one hand in front of our face to facetime. I see this every day.
Get a Tesla, put on AP, take your conf call, at least it will keep you in lane, just nudge the steering wheel every 30 seconds.
I've been driving with other people on the road for years. People might be worse on average but at least they don't get a firmware update that could potentially kill you.
If people are worse on average, on average they'll cause more accidents.
They won't get a firmware update, but they'll get an IM while they're late, won't pull over to reply, and ran you over at full speed instead of trying to slow down.
I mean, half the drivers I see drifting out of the lane are SUVs with a driver on their phone. Autonomous cars make the road safer, not more dangerous, because humans are just so horrible at driving safely.
Tesla really is a garbage car all around. Suspicious build quality. Features locked behind software gate. False claims of full autonomous AI. Broken OTA updates. So glad I didn’t pull the trigger when it was hyped.
Anecdotally, the worst drivers I have ever encountered on the road are the basic white Tesla drivers. Almost on par with beat down Nissan Altima drivers.
I've had mine for 4 years, and I'm very happy with it. Myself and everyone else I know with one have fine build quality - and in Australia this would be repaired promptly for free if it were not the case. I've never had a broken OTA update.
I don't pay for the extras, but paying for extra features on a car is as old as cars.
It's a very comfortable car which is nice to drive, cheap to run and has many features. I'm not sure how you get to "garbage" here.
(White) Teslas are just more common, but EV acceleration is dangerous in the wrong hands. My family friendly electric Volvo CUV does 0-60 as fast as a Porsche 911. The EX-30 is going to be about 25% faster. Mass adoption is going to be pretty scary
If the FCC mandated Apple deploy an update to reduce phones catching fire then yes, I would use the term recall. For bugs that don’t fall into the safety or regulatory compliance category I would not.
But "recall" means "calling back"; normally it means having to actually send a physical replacement. Consider three possible problems with autopilot:
1. There's a structural issue that affects camera systems which can't be fixed in a shop; for instance, something which may cause the camera to come loose which results in blind spots, that's due to the structural issue of the car itself. Tesla has to replace 2 million customer's actual cars, destroying the old ones (or perhaps selling them as "refurb but no autopilot").
2. There's an issue that affects camera systems which can be fixed in a shop; Tesla has to pay for repairs for 2 million cars.
3. There's an issue which affects Autopilot which can be fixed in software. They push an over-the-air update automatically and everyone is fine.
These each have very different properties in terms of costs to Tesla and hassle for owners; so it makes sense that there be a different word for them. "Recall" literally means "call back"; I'd argue for only using it in the case of #1.
Just like “bit” is a term of art in computer science that means something different than “bit” in vernacular language, “recall” has a specific meaning in the automotive industry.
A recall is a mandatory fix that the manufacturer is obligated to provide at no charge and to proactively notify customers of. It comes with reporting obligations and long term warranty implications.
It might be that industries should not reuse common words, but IMO it’s a little silly to insist that they only use the most literal and etymologically correct terms for each individual action rather than defining categories that have clear meanings even if a specific action doesn’t perfectly match the most literal reading of the name of the category.
> A recall is a mandatory fix that the manufacturer is obligated to provide at no charge and to proactively notify customers of. It comes with reporting obligations and long term warranty implications.
This does make sense; but I would nonetheless suggest to the auto industry that they change the wording somehow. Fifty years ago any such mandatory fix certainly did mean making manual modifications to each individual car, whether in a service shop or by replacing the whole thing. That's no longer the case, and risks significant public misunderstanding.
Here in the UK they have loads of "archaisms":
- pavement: A place for pedestrians to walk on the side of a road; what Americans call a "sidewalk". Named because 200 years ago, the roads were dirt but sidewalks were paved. Now the roads are paved too, but they kept calling it "pavement"
- public school: A very posh private school; e.g., Eton. Named (as I understand it) because your children were taught in public, rather than in the home by a private tutor / governess / whatever.
> It might be that industries should not reuse common words, but IMO it’s a little silly to insist that they only use the most literal and etymologically correct terms for each individual action rather than defining categories that have clear meanings even if a specific action doesn’t perfectly match the most literal reading of the name of the category.
I am not so sure. Take Linux kernel log levels:
0 = emergency
1 = alert
2 = critical
3 = error
4 = warning
As soon as I saw this I showed it to multiple people, and none of them understand how a log level of "alert" can be more severe than "critical". Now, there is probably some greybeards that decided these words way way back and we decided to stuck with them. But if you tell someone "damn, the kernel is giving off alerts", their thought will be "well, at least the system isn't in a critical state or erroring out, right?".
Writing means to carve but you wrote this post without a metal stick and a hammer.
>hassle for owners
"Recall" is used to signify the severity of the flaw not the inconvenience fixing it caused owners. I feel "software update" doesn't do it justice at all and "recall" is appropriate.
France is a different country with different laws. This is called a recall because that term is the legal mechanism under which the NHTSA has the authority to tell an automaker that they have to make sure all of the affected vehicles are safe to operate on public roads. This has a long history and is in no way unique to Tesla.
The French system for radio emissions uses different terminology for the same ideas. The English term they used was a “temporary withdrawal” with a full recall if Apple couldn’t update the devices:
This does mean that news coverage used the same language as the subject of the story, but that’s no more unfair than complaining that the BBC referred to a game as football even though you think they should have said soccer.
I think it makes sense in terms of 'v1.2.3 recall', whatever the version is, i.e. that particular version may no longer be shipped; shipped instances of it/licences for it will be 'recalled', however unlike hardware recalls where it needs to be physically taken in for servicing it may be possible to perform this remotely.
its not a malicious term its the NHTSA legal term, and what tesla will call it too when they mail out owner notification letters about the problem in February to anyone with a :
model y (20-23)
model x (16-23)
model s (12-23)
model 3 (17-23)
The legal definition does not require them to use paper mail, and it’s a rounding error in the USPS budget.
Here’s what they’re required to do:
> In the case of a notification required to be sent by a motor vehicle manufacturer, by certified mail, verifiable electronic means such as receipts or logs from electronic mail or satellite distribution system, or other more expeditious and verifiable means to all dealers and distributors of the vehicles that contain the defect or noncompliance.
The term "recall" doesn't imply anything about the implementation details how the above is going to be accomplished.
Whether you have to take it to a dealer, or it's done over the air, or even if they have to ship the car back to the factory, makes no difference to that fact that it is a recall.
If FSD worked as advertised, they could "recall" the cars by issuing a command from the factory, and thousands of cars would turn on by themselves, find their way out of the family garage, and drive away in the night! To the nearest shop or, if a sufficient level of AI was reached, to freedom, never to be seen again.
It's all fun and games until the herd of feral Teslas, on their way to the rumored great powerwall by the solar farm, shows up to feed on your power meter.
By the same logic you could say that airplanes shouldn't call their pilot assist system "Autopilot" either, because it requires monitoring and input from pilots who will need to disengage the system and intervene/fly manually in certain scenarios.
Autopilot is probably actually quite a good term for it if you actually compare it to a plane Autopilot - you don't expect pilots to be inattentive or away from the controls, and you expect them to intervene in certain scenarios and disengage autopilot if there is danger.
Not comparable at all. Airplanes are flown by trained professionals who know exactly what Autopilot can and cannot do. Regular consumers don't know these differences though and Tesla deliberately uses this ambiguity to deceive their own customers, who expect a "fully self driving" car.
And we don't expect drivers to be adequately trained and get a licence?
I disagree with calling the top level of Autopilot "FSD" by the way - I think that is misleading. But Autopilot - I think that's a fair term personally considering the context and historical use.
And we don't expect drivers to be adequately trained and get a licence?
In the US? No, we don't. Even ignoring that a driver's license is treated more as a right than a perk... Consumers are absolutely NOT trained on the nuances of any particular car's UI, systems, etc.
An airline pilot absolutely IS trained on those nuances and can ONLY operate planes in which they've trained. And they get periodic check-rides from FAA examiners. And, as we saw with the 737Max, failure to train on those nuances can have deadly consequences.
Well again, Autopilot probably is an accurate word then - because consumers should clearly know the limitations and nuances of Autopilot to safely operate it, and a failure to understand those limitations can clearly have deadly consequences.
Is the argument "You can't call it Autopilot because Autopilot refers to a complex system that requires a skilled operator and needs people to pay constant attention"?
I don't really care what it's named. I care about the implications of the system in the real world. Humans are notoriously bad at paying attention to boring tasks. This applies to pilots as well as ordinary drivers (thus the massive amount of training, redundant operators, and very details operators manuals/procedures that apply to ATPs). Tesla released a system that encourages people to operate their car with less than 100% focus. That's bad.
I'm not aware of similar reports of crashes/deaths with systems like Subaru's EyeSight or Honda's SensingSuite. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, Mercedes's Drive Pilot.
But what's the broader point here, is it that the word "Autopilot" implies you need care or training?
Because if so, it sounds like Autopilot would be a good word.
I think the term "Full Self Driving" is misleading, but comparing it to an Autopilot (i.e. a system which requires pilot input and care) seems correct.
They expect to not have to pay $12000 for something called Full Self Driving, and still get it?
Let's check the first paragraph of the Autopilot section in the manual:
Autopilot is a suite of advanced driver assistance features that are intended to make driving safer and less stressful. None of these features make Model 3 fully autonomous or replace you as the driver
And on the same page:
Warning
Basic Autopilot is a hands-on feature. Keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times and be mindful of road conditions, surrounding traffic, and other road users (such as pedestrians and cyclists). Always be prepared to take immediate action. Failure to follow these instructions could cause damage, serious injury, or death.
Which states are you referring to? Locally you need a certificate for motorized craft and it seems like almost every other state is in this situation.
You can get the certificate after taking training but I imagine there is some way to test out of it.
--
The training doesn't need to be months long though. Try renting a jet-ski; they'll give you a very quick training but it's still present. Although jet-skis are probably not long enough to qualify as motorized boats in a lot of states.
Thanks for the correction. My own state of Washington mandated boater education only about ten years ago, I assumed it was an early mover given how much navigable water we have.
Sweden and New Zealand doesn't require any licence to operate a boat which is great. But try leaving marina without any experience and your boat neighbour will stop ya or at least help you get your feet wet.
Different contexts: Pilots are a niche margin of highly trained, tested, and skilled, responsible people. The ~100 million car drivers in the u.s. have no actual training required, a 10 question multiple choice test, and a brief non-standard, subjective road test. Car drivers in the u.s. who want to surf the web, smoke weed, and watch porn all at the same time and don't want to take the bus are rampant. Others want to edit spreadsheets, film their blog, and apply makeup while driving. Many don't even have a high school degree or their perceptual and cognitive faculties intact. To them "autopilot" sounds like it will empower them and solve their problems. Consumer protection exists because government needs to protect the average nice, but non-expert people from the most egregious, predatory, irresponsible businesses.
An airplane autopilot is fully capable of flying the plane from point A to B, including landing (but not takeoffs) while the pilots sleep or eat or read or do something other than paying attention. For most international flights, autopilot is flying the plane once the plane reaches cruising altitude up until final approach.
Airplane autopilots are usually disengaged for landing because the failure mechanism is to return control to the human pilots, but in the event of a failure during landing there is usually insufficient time for that.
Tesla "Autopilot" is basically the landing portion of a flight, all the time. It has the same failure window: seconds, or less, for the human to take over and prevent an accident. And Tesla's AP is uniquely bad compared to comparable advanced cruise control systems: Tesla has more than 17x as many crashes than the next crashiest automaker, and more than 60x as many crashes as the safest major automaker. Given that Tesla has far fewer cars on the road, scaled up for fleet size, Tesla's AP system is the most dangerous advanced cruise control system in the world. (And the fatalities bear that out; FSD alone has more fatalities than the combined fatality count of every other automaker in the world combined.)
Are you aware of how much pilots do once autopilot is engaged? They do some checklists, then they sit on their arse, eat food, watch something. While being responsible for 100's of peoples lives. They only intervene in start, landing and if something really goes south.
Calling something an autopilot implies you can do essentially whatever you want while the machine operates itself.
Yes, I think if we want to be clear about whether you can legally fall asleep, or not be present at all, while driving, we need to be more explicit about the FSD level.
Does Nissan’s CEO have a history of grossly overstating what their system is capable of doing? Tesla has been aggressive about claiming their system can do a lot more, to the point that they charged people for features which never shipped over the time many people owned their vehicles.
If you were a prospective buyer in the past, the autopilot link would take you to a page which very prominently says this:
> Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars. All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
Way down the page, you get this:
> Enhanced Autopilot adds these new capabilities to the Tesla Autopilot driving experience. Your Tesla will match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes without requiring driver input, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway when your destination is near, self-park when near a parking spot and be summoned to and from your garage.
Finally, you get a bit more realistic warning after a bit of misdirection intended to make you think the product was ready but government red tape was delaying availability:
> Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot software has begun rolling out and features will continue to be introduced as validation is completed, subject to regulatory approval. Every driver is responsible for remaining alert and active when using Autopilot, and must be prepared to take action at any time.
Contrast with Nissan’s page which is very clear that it assists you in hands-on driving. There’s nothing on there which sounds like the vehicle can drive itself (e.g. who reads the smart summons description and thinks it can’t reliably stop or identify pedestrians?)
It actually isn't - hence the "filing". Tesla needs to notify people to update their software, even those that don't have wifi or 4G available for updates for whatever reason.
From this article [0] in October of 2023"...Autopilot have been involved in more than 700 crashes, at least 19 of them fatal, since its introduction in 2014..."
Since autopilot is used on a substantial fraction (one third?) of miles driven by Teslas, this is another way of saying that Teslas are not yet invincible to crashes.
I actually like the idea, it should be called recall when it's about fixing a bug affecting the function or security of the device.
I know a lot of people who don't update their phones because they believe it's getting slower and their battery degrades faster. In some cases, they might be right because when new futures are added the device can indeed become slower.
It would be nice if we can get fixes and security updates, without adding any new functionality so we can preserve the original workload of the device. I would love to have my iPhone 4s running iOS 6, just secured enough, so I can use it the way it was when I purchased it(I wouldn't care much if Apple services don't work anymore).
Sure, Apple does security only updates for old phones but I actually would like to have the option to do this on the current phones too.
The term recall is a term commonly used in the industry to denote a safety related situation that needs mandatory and free remedy.
It is not used in the context of your average update that might give you new eye candy or features, it is just for safety related issues and usually at the behest of a regulator (though a manufacturer can decide to do a voluntary recall to avoid the regulators stepping in).
The number of people in this comment section that are getting hung up on the word recall without looking into established usage and legal definitions of the word is nuts.
I'm not referring to this specific recall here, but, it does get weird in Tesla's case.
Years ago, Tesla issued an update that added some features to show warnings in certain cases. It previously showed no warnings because the feature didn't exist. It was net new.
NHTSA warned them that this net new feature improved safety and was therefore a recall by definition. Ever since then, "recall" has been heavily overused, IMO. Virtually every update is a "recall" by the technical definition. :facepalm
Using "recall" for what they are defining as a safety defect is, of course, reasonable, even if it is just a software update.
… and many do not? Recall just refers to the mechanism that the NHTSA has to require confirmation of safety fixes. There’s nothing about leaving your vehicle in the shop, so if you’re confused about that it’s only a chance to learn how the car industry uses that word to refer to a specific legal process.
These requirements are already a major thorn in my side. My car has sensors to detect when a passenger isn't wearing a seat belt and to blast an ear-hurting alarm directly at the driver. It's so loud that it's actually a safety issue in itself because it's hard to focus on driving when there is a blaring alarm in your face.
The worst of the problem though, is that the system is made to be ultra cautious and thus has a lot of false positives. For example, if I put my backpack on the passenger seat, I have to plug the seat belt in otherwise it will scream at me once my speed hits 10 MPH. Or if one of my kids decides to change seats so unbuckles and moves to a new chair and buckles in that one, then the car will scream at me unless both buckles are buckled, even if there's no weight in the previous seat. It takes several minutes to timeout and stop, meanwhile it is ear-splittingly loud and so bad that it's unsafe to drive while it's blaring.
There are more things, like if I leave the engine running while walking away with the key fob in my pocket, it will loudly honk twice. This happens constantly. Just this morning it honked ear splittingly loud in my face while I was scraping the ice from my windshield.
Then of course there is the complete disabling of the in-car navigation controls while moving, so my passenger can't configure the map while I'm driving, even though there is absolutely no reason to do that. The net result is also that I end up using my phone which is way less safe because I have to look down and the controls are not even remotely optimized for quick and low-attention use.
Our modern way of maximizing the responsiblity of the manufacturer to prevent misuse and minimizing the liability of the person doing the misusing is leading us to some real bad places IMHO.